Rsv1, a single dominant resistance gene in soybean PI 96983 (Rsv1), confers extreme resistance against all known American strains of Soybean mosaic virus (SMV), except G7 and G7d. SMV-G7 provokes a lethal systemic hypersensitive response (LSHR), whereas SMV-G7d, an experimentally evolved variant of SMV-G7, induces systemic mosaic. To identify the elicitor of Rsv1-mediated LSHR, chimeras were constructed by exchanging fragments between the molecularly cloned SMV-G7 (pSMV-G7) and SMV-G7d (pSMV-G7d), and their elicitor functions were assessed on PI 96983 (Rsv1). pSMV-G7-derived chimeras containing only P3 of SMV-G7d lost the elicitor function, while the reciprocal chimera of pSMV-G7d gained the function.